At the 2012 Conference on College Composition and Communication, three well-known scholars of composition led a discussion on a writing exercise they'd assigned themselves. Each wrote for an hour a day for a 30-day month on an everyday object, a consciousness-raising activity that revealed much about the the objects examined and the writers themselves. We've taken it upon ourselves to replicate this exercise and record the results here.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Handmade Quilt

(Thank you, Jamie.)

Last Saturday, I stood in that entryway where you and I use to wait for cars to carry us away. Before we had our licenses, our parents acting as unwilling chauffeurs and the backseat as a confessional without a curtain where we’d share whispered secrets. I think I like him more than he likes me. I think he likes me more than I like him. I’m afraid to be alone. I’m afraid to die. You guided me back to that door, into the warm sunlight with the world very much alive, even when we closed our eyes.

Last Saturday, I found us in your first car – the great white Oldsmobile, a whale of a car! – where we spent summer days in between pools and houses and autumn weekends after Waffle House or the shotty apartment perched above Jeremy’s parent’s garage. Questions ringing in the air Should I admit that my promise is counterfeit? I’m careless and childish and that is all I can hope to be? You showed me back to the door, into the warm sunlight with the world very much alive, even when we closed our eyes.

Last Saturday, I wanted to say thank you but just wasn’t sure. Twenty something years of friendship cannot be quantified or drawn on a chart of empty sentiments. But I can start by saying it is your voice I’ve known to be the first one on the phone. When I’m heavy with worry or deafened by anger, you are the cool of the water with the tone of a teacher. You become the calm of my conscious, quietly reassuring me. Remember the days that we remember? You have saved this life for me and sewn it into beauty – a handmade quilt composed of panels of laughter echoing, wedding bells jingling, babies crying, tears falling, and pages turning through the story of us, like warm sunlight with the world very much alive, even when I close my eyes.